Shadows
by AGENT Kuma-chan
Summary: Akane has only ever known Kogami for his shadows. -Tsunemori, Kogami, and the ghosts inbetween


**Title:** Shadows

**Prompt:** Feb 22 / Only the Dusk Sky Knows

**Pairing: **Akane, Kogami

**A/N:** This was supposed to be 50 times shorter and just about Akane and Kogami. And then Yuki and the others appeared.

**Summary: **_She has only ever known him for his shadows. _

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...

...

...

Her lips part slightly, a warm puff escaping in the cold air. She should step inside, she knows—Akane can't afford to get sick. The dusk sky calls to her, the mix of colours, the blending of day and night.

It makes her think of him, inexplicably. Behind her she can hear the machines that operate her life whirring, patiently waiting for her to return. Without looking, she knows her psycho-pass is still low, still a calm shade of blue.

"What a heartless person I am," she mutters.

-x-

"This case...it's just..." her partner rasps, a hand covering her mouth at the monstrosity in front of her.

Akane feels old as she looks at the victim, at the scratches on the wooden floor, the splatter of blood that has dyed the wall. Gruesome, but this isn't her first body. A sharp taste fills her mouth and she swallows it before getting to work.

Calmly, she kneels next to the victim to examine his body, to see the clues left behind. What would Kogami do here?

She turns to look at the scratches on the floor, to see the messages left by the criminal. Kogami's voice whispers in her ears, reminding her to look elsewhere, to make that hidden connection.

Grimacing, Mika kneels next to her, a determined expression on her face. "What..." she pauses, swallowing hard and closing her eyes. After a moment, she manages to look at the body. "What should I do?"

Akane smile softly. Had she been that strong when she first joined? She can barely remember. "You think like a detective."

"I...I see..." It's not something taught in class and Akane can see the trouble the idea is giving. "Do...how long till you get used to this?"

Akane looks back at the bodies, tastes the bile that still rises to her throat. It's easier to push it down now, but it still comes. "I haven't yet. I just...keep moving."

-x-

She rarely dreams of Yuki and it's almost always of those last few minutes.

"Akane!" she screams, a frightened tremble in her voice.

Akane's legs shake, her hands barely able to hold the gun. She almost drops it instead—the system is never wrong. His coefficient is 0. The system is never wrong.

His coefficient is 0.

"AKANE!" Yuki screams a last time and the world turns red.

-x-

"You should go home, young lady," Masaoka warns her, worried as much in death as he was in life. "Don't overwork yourself."

"At least if you're staying so late, you should play a game," Kagari intercedes, and Akane tries not to reply. Not this time. She has a report to finish and she's tired as it is from their recent case.

She shouldn't be entertaining ghosts.

She does so anyways. "I can't quite cook as well as you did. I've been trying for the last few weeks..." her voice trails off as she remembers her near-disasters in the kitchen.

"Of course not," Kagari scoffs, a relaxed grin on his face. "I had a lifetime of practice. You think you can become a master like me in a month?"

"A lifetime..." Masaoka snorts. "You've only been cooking for the past few years."

"Oi, don't go revealing the master's secrets!"

"Akane?" Mika steps into the room, yawning tiredly. "I'm heading home. Are you good here?"

Akane stares at her partner for a minute before looking at the empty space behind her. She can hear their voices still, familiar and painful.

"No, I'll...I'll go home too."

-x-

It's worse when she gets home. At work the ghosts are a shared one, and while she's sure Ginoza isn't talking to them, she knows he feels them too.

She catches him at times, staring over his shoulder, almost ready to bark orders to men who aren't there. To be in a position he has lost.

Akane shouldn't feel happy about this, but it makes her heart ache a little less to see him also remembering.

There is no one to share Yuki with. That memory is hers and hers alone.

_Why...why did I die?_

Yuki's voice floats through Akane's living room, pained and broken. It isn't that hard to remember the cold steel of the walkways, the glint of the knife. The red, red blood. She sees it too vividly when she's sleeping to forget.

"I don't want to remember you like this," she responds to this bodiless ghost. She doesn't cry anymore, all of her tears exhausted after Kogami's chances of return whittled away to nothing.

_Why?_

"I want to remember your smile!"

There is no answer to that. She didn't expect one.

-x-

There's only one ghost she never sees, never hears, never finds. Somehow, she notices him even more despite that.

-x-

"Do you see them?" She asks Ginoza as they sit in her car, staking out a house. He doesn't turn to look at her. The wounds are too fresh.

"No," he responds without asking for clarification. "You?"

"Sometimes." She adjusts her seat. "Is it easier...?"

He doesn't answer. Outside the car, she can see it start to rain. In the distance she can make out the soft lights of cars as they move through the streets. The lights halo, merging together in the dark, and she can imagine a giant beast slithering through the city.

An hour later she spots their target. "He's here."

As they get out, he finally speaks. "It probably is. I just..."

Final words. Unspoken apologies.

She thinks that's what she feels like with Kogami. With Yuki. She can't talk to one and the other never listens.

"I know," she says before pulling out her dominator.

-x-

It's awkward when they meet for lunch, where three friends there are now two. They stare at the third chair at the table awkwardly, unwilling to touch it.

"I miss her," her friend softly starts, her eyes no longer red from crying. How long does it take to get over a death?

How long does it take to get over loss?

Akane doesn't know the answer to either of those questions. She's still learning the meaning of those two terms. What it feels to lose someone to death, the finality of it all, the anger at her own helplessness.

What it feels to lose someone alive, the constant desire to go look, the sour taste of failing.

Akane wonders when their ghosts will stop haunting her.

"She always complained. Even when it was something she didn't need to complain about."

"She never stopped smiling, though," Akane replies. It's easier to remember with friends and she can picture Yuki, happy and content Yuki, so much easier here. Without a second thought, she reaches across the table and grabs her friend's hand. The other girl's eyes widen, before she smiles and returns the grip.

"No, that she didn't. Even when she was dumped, she was stupidly optimistic. Remember that time in the mixer?" she starts, chuckling lightly.

Akane's hand never relaxes its grip.

-x-

The ghosts are still there when she gets to work, still lingering in the corner of her eyes.

"We should go over his profile before we continue," Akane says, looking over at Ginoza.

"We should be able to form one by now," he agrees. There is a silence for a moment, the echo of two—no, three—voices chiming in.

There is silence and she is hesitant to break it.

"I'm not good at that yet," Mika sighs, and the moment is gone.

-x-

Looking in the mirror, Akane touches her face lightly. She traces her eye, the bridge of her nose, the lines of her jaw. There are no cracks here to match the ones she feels inside.

The ones she felt inside.

It gets easier with time. It always does. A hand covers her heart. Her lips mouth a name she can no longer say.

The pain is still there. Not sharp as she once knew, not capable of breaking her in two.

Just, more of an old pang. An ache in her joints. She feels it more acutely when she thinks of the Sibyl system.

It feels like a betrayal. Of him, of herself, of her friend and the coworkers that she lost. That she will lose.

It's the only way she knows to keep moving.

-x-

"It's strange working with you like this," she says as she drives Ginoza to his father's grave.

"I suppose it is," he responds, a small smile on his face as he stares out the window. There is something lighter about him now, something brighter, like he has finally found his answer. He turns to look at her. "Not what you expected when you joined, is it?"

"Not really." And what about the answer she found? She feels more like a dog than he does some days. "Though it is strange to see you without glasses."

He chuckles, his hands hovering over his eyes. "I sometimes find myself forgetting and pushing them up."

"Really? How long were you wearing them?"

"A long time." He pauses, staring at his hands. A wistful expression covers his face, the same one he makes whenever he's exiting the memorial. "It was a way to escape."

She doesn't press any further. "You look better without them."

"Really?" He looks at her now and she flushes, realizing the insinuation in her words.

"I-I mean, you don't look so cold anymore. Detached," she mumbles, flustered.

He laughs softly, another thing he has started to do more often now. "I suppose so."

-x-

The yellow sea sways, taunting her. Her body refuses to get up, refuses to take that step it needs. In the distance she can see Kogami still moving through it, heading toward a goal she cannot stop.

This is a dream she gets more often than she cares to admit. She already knows how this ends.

She struggles to her feet anyways.

"Is this what you felt with Sasayama?" she asks. "Is this obsession?"

Instinctively she knows it isn't. No, obsession is something darker. This is guilt. This is regret.

A bang goes off in the distance and she's too late once again.

-x-

It's dawn now, and she crawls out of her bed, restless. Outside her window, she can see the faint rays of light as the sun rises. The opposite of the sunset, the banishing of shadows.

Strangely, she never thinks of Kogami when she watches a sunrise. His own demons should be gone now, though. He should be like that.

But she has only ever known him with his shadows, with the cold glint of a predator in his eyes.

It is the only way she'll ever know him.

"Kogami..." she mutters, tired of the futility of it all. Sasayama was his ghost.

And Kogami is hers.


End file.
